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I'm a forty year old woman from Germany and I've been married for 5 years now. I have two small kids.

I have been kind of a free spirit all my live and my freedom is very important to me. I never wanted to marry or have kids, but, well, I did in the end, though I sometimes ask myself how i ended up that way...

I have had several long-term relationships and have also been single for three years, which has suited me quite well. I don't mind being alone and it is very important to me to be able to do what I want.

Now, after my children are no longer so very dependent on me, I feel like I want to get some of the freedom of simply being myself back into my life. I love my husband and we still have quite a satisfying sex life, although it has been reduced considerably since the births of the children.

For some time now I have been feeling that i want to explore relationships with other men. As long as I can remember, I have been in love with more than one person at a time, often a friend of my boyfriend or someone similar. I don't know if i want to be in other relationships that are as deep as the one I have with my husband, but I would love to be able to see where being involved with other people, sexually and emotionally, will lead me.

I don't know how my husband will react if I tell him about my wishes. I come from a rural area, where people are rather old-fashioned. And he is, too. I cannot imagine ending the marriage, because I love him and like the way we spend our time together and because I don't want to hurt my children or us. And I don't want to cheat on him, either, because i believe in honesty and I dont't want to hurt him. But I don't know if he will be up to it and i am afraid that it will hurt our relationship if I am open to him about my feelings. And I am afraid what the consequences will be if he tells me that he does not want an open realtionship. I don't know if I can live the way I do right now for the next thirty or forty years...

Maybe anyone has been in a similar situation and can give me advice on how to handle it? What should I say, how can I present my argument? What can I do to discuss this calmly and reasonably whithout getting into a fight?

My wife and mother of two kids has told me she is interested in other guys.

It was/is rough. The roadblock is that:
1) You are asking him to rewrite his worldview
2) You are asking him to renegotiate his marriage contract

You can try to make it easier by doing one without the other; it was hard for me because my wife was trying to do both at once, but became a whole lot easier to deal with when we talked it out and came to this conclusion:
1) My wife has agency; if she wanted to cheat, she always has that option. It is better instead that she is honest and open and fair.
2) Because there is agency, there is no 'rush'. She felt there was a deadline pressure or the window would close. There is still tension because I'm still rewriting my worldview, but at least our marriage contract is still stable-the same- until something happens.

#1 is as simple as saying, I think, "I fancy Guy Fellow at work." He is a man, and likely has his own list of women he thinks attractive. Start on common ground.

Note that I don't have a better answer because I'm still writing that chapter of the book! My wife went on a couple dates (that I probably wasn't really ready for!) and slowed down after talking to me, but also because the holidays is a really busy and stressful time for everyone. She is still getting messages from the guys, and still tells me about them, but hasn't made any effort to organize additional dates at this time.

The hardest part may be how your time is spent with your husband. Do you literally do everything together?

When I introduced my primary partner to poly, we went through the swingers community first so he could have the opportunity to have some spontaneous sexual experiences with multiple partners.

I am a social extrovert with lots of relationship/sexual experience whereas he is an introvert and didn't have a lot of sexual experience.

We discussed our boundaries which in the beginning was simply that we would be together at all times for anything sexual to happen and we would use safe sex of course.

We now identify as poly and he is super cool about the whole thing. We never really felt like we were swingers, but being in that environment allowed an opening to happen! Now that he has had these experiences, he is way more open!! We are free to pursue relationships with others and we discuss everything with each other! It's awesome!

__________________ The key to life is in being fully engaged and peacefully detached simultaneously and authentically in each moment.